Limbo of the Lost devs respond to plagiarism charges on GameSpot (thanks
Mike Martinez and
Joystiq) has word from Majestic as the developer of Limbo of the Lost
finally responds to allegations that their adventure game contains elements
plagiarized from other games as well as Hollywood movies (story).
Majestic says they were "shocked and mortified" to learn of these
allegations, saying the assets in question came from "sources external to the
development team," though arguably once these were incorporated into the game
those source were actually part of that development team. Here's their full
statement:

In response to the shocking notification that some alleged
unauthorized copyrighted materials submitted by sources external to the
development team have been found within the PC game Limbo of the Lost, we (the
development team) have given our consent and full cooperation to both publishers
who are recalling all units from all territories immediately.

Please be assured that we do not condone in anyway the use of unauthorized
copyrighted materials and if we had been made aware earlier, we would of course
have ceased development of the product and rectified the issue prior to the
publication process.

To the best of our knowledge no one at Majestic, [European publisher] G2Games or
[North American publisher Tri Synergy, Inc.] knew about this infringement and
knowingly played any part in it.

We can only apologise to all regarding this issue, as a team we are shocked and
mortified regarding these events and we continue to work with said publishers in
order to rectify the issue.

I'm fairly certain nobody worked on this game for "years". Maybe a few months, and then *punt* out the door it went. Since a massive amount of time in a point-click adventure is spent on the art, they essentially shortcut their way to an even faster release by grabbing other folks' work.

Of course the devs are talking out their ass with this press release. The main purpose is simply to once again absolve their publisher.